SFCS -- Strong Female Character Syndrome.

I believe it was Stuart West who told me in private correspondence that he appreciated how many strong female characters I have. I was a little thrown there because it took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about.

In my novels, I have Manana Shushurin, who's a spy that's more James Bond than George Smiley.  She reads, likes music, has a degree from Wittenberg university .... has no social life, and technically, lives with her mother (technically, I say, because she really lives in her office). She also has a secret that's eating a hole in her life.



I also have Maureen McGrail.  She's an Interpol detective, local Dublin cop, relentless, tenacious, and she knows about three martial arts.  She's also pining for a guy who came into her life, swept her off of her feet (just by being himself, really) and disappeared, without showing even a hint of romantic interest in her.



Then there's Wilhelmina Goldberg, who is 4'11", computer nerd, daughter of two esoteric languages nerds. She likes science fiction and fantasy, programs her computer to talk like characters out of Lord of the Rings, and has a subscription to Security magazine.



In context, I should point out that Stuart was using the strong female character comment as a segue into a completely different point, an issue he found in my writing. (Apparently, I shouldn't be putting in bust size as far as describing a female character.  I neglected to tell Stuart that if I knew anything about clothing, I would probably include men's jacket sizes to paint a clearer, more accurate picture of them, too. But I don't know any men who are the sizes I need. Me? OCD?  Nah....)



In any case, the SFC term struck me, and stuck with me.



And then there was this article, entitled I hate Strong Female Characters.  If you read through it, you might find a few points to agree with, and a few problems.



Now, I agree with the author on the initial point.  I also have problems with the SFC label. I really do, because it tends to detract from, oh, the point. In the example they used of Buffy-- she was smart, witty, with outside the box solutions to non-vampire problems (shall we start with the fertilizer bomb in the high school, or the rocket launcher?).  But "Strong" is the only descriptor one can come up with?



In my own work, I spent so much time on developing characters like Manana and Wilhelmina, their quirks and habits and hobbies, that I feel a little awkward if the best description anyone can come up with about them is just "strong."



Though you want my problem with this author?

1)  "I want good complex characters!"



.... And then, let's focus completely on Buffy, because she's the STRONG character.... and ignore Willow, who saves the day repeatedly, but is physically as strong as your average anemic? Faith, who's as physically strong as Buffy, but a broken character? How about Cordelia, who starts out a vacuous California mean girl, and becomes more interesting within the first half of season 1? Anya, who goes through a fairly strange character arc of her own?



And, while they're talking about complex characters, they boiled Buffy down to only "SFC." How about witty? Smart? Creative? The example used in the article was the end point of a two-episode arc exposing just how vulnerable Buffy really is. Yes, she's got superpowers, but she's still a teenager, with all the problems that comes with it, in addition to waging a constant war against everything that came to kill her, swallow the Earth, etc. The author managed to ignore the entire point of a two-part story!



Who demands good complex characters! and then ignores them when s/he gets them?  If this article had said that the "SFC" label shoved a character into a box and left them there, then I could agree to some degree.  But this author seems to be guilty of doing just that.



2) I want a 1:1 ratio of complex characters, male and female! 

The author prattles on about Peggy Carter of Captain America: The First Avenger, complaining that she was unbalanced and cartoonish, making a lot of assumptions.





The author mentions that Peggy Carter shooting Captain America's shield is a temper tantrum that no guy would have gotten away with. Obviously, this person never saw the 100 generic Stupid People Tricks that are on cable, and mostly male.  The author assumed that in firing, Peggy had been too stupid to not be listening to the toymaker Stark prattle on about his cool toys for however long she'd been in his general orbit. The author also assumed that no one in the entire room knew that the shield was bulletproof-- which is kind of like people in Q's lab not knowing to duck on a regular basis.



The author then insists that this "over-the-top" reaction is because she's one of two women with a speaking part, and there be more women on screen to counter stuff like this. (Which is odd, since I counted four -- which included a grandma with a tommy gun, and a SHIELD agent at the end of the film).



My real problem?  First, the author makes these above assumptions and then kvetches that they could have shoe-horned in more women. Why? Just to shoe-horn in more women. So we could have a 1:1 ratio of women in the film. Really?



Hey, maybe we could have put in more cardboard cutouts. Besides, if you really want equality, then Captain America: The First Avenger, was perfectly equal. There were only two complex characters in the whole film.  Tommy Lee Jones was playing....Tommy Lee Jones.... Zola was Mad Scientist #2 ... The Red Skull was Psycho Villain #6 ... Eskine was "Dr. Littleoldmun" from Mel Brooks' High Anxiety. And Stark was very much "Howard Hughes Carbon Copy #1."  Outside of the sidekick Bucky (Plucky Sidekick #9), are any of Captain America's team referred to by name?



In short, Carter and Rodgers were the only two characters of any substance in the film. This isn't a complaint. I'm sure they were plenty deep in character design, but there was little enough of it on the screen. Not to mention-- it's a movie. If you're Peter Jackson, you get nine hours of films for develop all of your character. If you're a Marvel film, you have, at most two hours and thirty minutes.  If you have two well-written and developed characters, you're ahead of the game.  I feel fortunate to have one, some days.



But for the 1:1 ratio this author wants?



Maybe this author would have liked more 2D characters. As she suggest, let's gender swap.... Dr. Zola?  So we can have a weak, simpering little woman be bullied by Tommy Lee Jones? Dr. Erskine? So we can have a little grandmother figure play the martyr?  Hey, we could gender swap Tommy Lee Jones, and have him played by Kathy Bates!  Why not have the Red Skull played by Angelina Jolie?



Now, a reasonable argument I got from Karina Fabian is from the point of view that, there were certainly a heck of a lot more women in the WW2 military than were seen in the film. There were secretaries, WACs, women who transported planes, codebreakers, nurses, etc.  That way, we could have had a lot of women.... but they would have been in the background, and probably would have completely boiled away this author's argument.



3) Women are at the back of the bus...um, movie poster, like Black Widow.



"Strong women are supposed to kick ass and keep their mouth shut." Really?



How about, oh, that Black Widow WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO OUTSMARTED LOKI?  IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE! GAAAHHHH!!!



How about that BLACK WIDOW WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD CLOSE THE PLOT DEVICE DESTROYING NEW YORK?



How about the fact that there were maybe five deep moments in the entire film, and Black Widow was in two of them (The five moments were Stark and Banner in Lab, Stark and Rodgers reconcile, Coulson, interrogating Loki, and Black Widow and Barton, post-brainwashing....six scenes, if you count Black Widow and Bruce Banner in India, giving her half the deep moments in the film).



Oh, hey, how about Sam Jackson? Maybe we should say The Avengers was racist, because he was in the back of the poster?



I'm sorry, but unless you're Iron Man or Thor, you're in the back of this poster.



4) Where's Thor?


Seriously, where's the movie Thor in this discussion?  You know, the movie that was mostly Kat Denning and Natalie Portman handling Chris Hemsworth as he was enduring culture shock? With some occasional exposition from Mr. Skaarsgard? Portman's character, astrophysicist Jane Foster, isn't "strong," in this sense, is she? Because last time I checked, most of my female friends could break her like a toothpick. Foster is instrumental in Thor's change from prick to hero, but is she thrown on the bonfires of the blogger's vanity because she doesn't come with a complete bio and genealogy?



Or does this author consider her merely as a damsel in distress?  Which would be odd, because if you were in the New Mexico town in Thor, you were in distress, up to and including the three beefy supporting characters and the Valkyrie that (quite literally) drop down out of the sky.



Or does this not count, because the end of the movie involves the Warriors Three, Odin, and Loki? Making it three more male characters on screen than women?  Do we count Freya, who tried to stopped three assassins coming to get Odin? Or because she wasn't on screen that often, should we throw her aside?



While not physically strong, I thought Jane Foster was very well written. She was the love interest, sure, but that love motivated both of them to be better.  He was motivated to be a better person, and she was motivated to continue pursuing interstellar/inter-dimensional travel.



Am I wrong? Or, as I asked, does she just not count?



Conclusion: Equality!



As I said at the beginning, I don't like the SFC label.  If you can shove my characters into a nice neat little box, I'm going to be pissy -- either at you for demeaning my characters, or at myself for making them cardboard cutouts.



I would have liked this article more if it were less obvious. It's clearly pushing an agenda -- not about creating good characters, but numerical "equality!" for "equality's" sake. By the end, I felt like I was reading a review of 300 that insisted that there should have been 150 female Spartans at Thermopylae (this is not a joke, I did read one of those).



I honestly couldn't tell you the ratio of my characters if you dared me to.



In A Pius Man, I've got Maureen, Manana and Wilhelmina named above as main characters. Is the ratio 1:1 if I include Giovanni Figlia's wife, the forensic specialist?



Is the ratio no longer 1:1 if I count the three priests in the background?



Is it all right if I have Scott "Mossad" Murphy, who can't shoot, is pale, anemic-looking, and pair him up with the sexy gunslinger Manana?  Does that make him weak, even though he will take gunfire and is a pivotal part of the book?



Does Wilhelmina Goldberg not count if she doesn't shoot anybody, but is a key part to hunting down the bad guys by the end?



At the end of the day, the SFC label is too simple. But so is reducing "equality" to numbers of people on screen and counting lines.  If you're keeping score with 1:1 ratios, exactly what will satisfy you? I have no idea.



Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go write a scene where Manana has to save Scott. Again.

Women in novels, and A Pius Man

On Monday, when I ripped a Tor Books blogger a new one, I wanted to go into an compare and contrast version of how to treat women in novels, mostly with novels I know, or novels I've written.



Then I looked at long long the bloody piece was, and decided to not bother.



After talking with Rebekah Hendershot yesterday, I've decided to go ahead and do just that.



Unfortunately, it's a hard to find a good beginning.  Seriously, where does one start?  With the fact that one of my favorite story of the Judges (biblical warlords) is a woman, Judith, walking into the tent of an enemy of Israel, and taking his head off, literally? Or, that when growing up, I found that the best part of Xena, Warrior Princess was not her leather outfit, but the glint in her eye right before she beat the hell out of everyone?



Do I start with Fr. Andrew Greeley, and his novels where the female and male leads had this tendency to save each other?



Maybe I could cover J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5, where the female leads practically dominate the series, and they have some of the best, strongest, most kick ass sequences -- usually without throwing a single punch, wearing clothing that's as revealing as your average monk's robes.



Perhaps I should start with the Irish mythology I grew up with, that had the belief that a woman was required for spirituality -- as in "a man could only go onto the afterlife after his woman drags him there, because otherwise the poor daft fool would probably just get himself lost along the way."



Or, perhaps I should just give my opinion in general, cite some specific examples, and move on.



Let's start with examples from the Tor article -- John Ringo's Ghost.  The premise is that a former SEAL, code-named "Ghost," finds himself in the middle of a terrorist plot, and literally gets dragged along for the ride. The blogger at tour uses Ghost's internal struggle between his instincts and his ethics (Ghost believes himself a rapist by nature, while on the other hand, he hasn't actually raped anybody, and he knows it's wrong), and the blogger uses that to paint all of John Ringo's work with one brushstroke.



However, looking in Ghost, the novel, we see multiple instances of women coming to the rescue.  During a firefight with the terrorists in question, Ghost only has a room filled with female college coeds for support. Of the course of one mission, he's saved by a gunship piloted by a female pilot (said pilot makes a comeback and also saves his but a time or two in later novels).  Sure, Ghost has problems, and the character knows that he has problems, and most of the character moment involves how his sublimates his own violent desires into something more socially acceptable ... which, alas, leads into sequences of more bondage porn than I ever wanted to read ... but the problem the character has is not a problem that John Ringo shares, and it's quite evident in practically every book Ringo has ever written -- even in later volumes starring Ghost.



And, of course, there is always Princess of Wands -- Ringo's novel where the hero is a tough, physically and spiritually fit, very beautiful and sexy .... suburban housewife who goes to church every Sunday, and married to the same man for years, with several children.



Like I said, Ghost's problem is not John Ringo's problem.



My point? In John Ringo's novels, no one is a passive participant. Even his civilian female protagonists make for strong characters, and are just as likely to pick up a gun and return fire, or throw grenades as needed.



With David Weber, another victim of the Tor hatchet job, his Honor Harrington character was criticized for  not having a sex life for multiple books.  Leaving out Honor's personal reasons for that (covered in the last blog), what the hell is a sex life supposed to add to a character, man or woman?



For the record: I don't write sex scenes. Period. My characters don't necessarily need to have a sex life. They're usually too busy being shot at.



In my novels, women are people, that they are women isn't all that special to me.  Of the main cast of A Pius Man, I have four women -- a secret service agent, a spy, an Interpol cop, and a forensic scientist.  Three out of four of them handle themselves well in combat -- two out of the three of them can give most of the main characters a run for their money.



In fact, I think the women are better action stars than my male characters -- Sean Ryan is the only main character who is overly equipped for combat (mostly through skill than through muscle). Giovanni Figlia has some combat experience, but he's mostly in a position of management, performing the job as detective and commander of the Swiss Guards. Egyptian cop Hashim Abasi is, literally, a member of a think tank. Scott Murphy, while he is a spy, can't even fire a gun well (which is why his trailer has him being knocked back by the recoil of his own gun).



Over the course of my life, I have found most women to be my equals, if not my betters. Of course, as I grow older, I have discovered that there are plenty of women who are screwed up, just in different ways than I'd expect.  But, in my books, I don't really have a weak female character. Ever. Man or woman, my characters can always find some sort of inner strength, even if it's pure, unadulterated stubbornness.  Though, as I think back on it, I think my female characters all have more combat training.



Are all of my female characters beautiful? They are in my head, though I don't know if they are on the page  For me, I find that there are few truly ugly women, and it usually takes effort.  I very often find that personality does make an appearance, and mar or improve the features. I'm told that none of the women I've dated have been beautiful, but, apparently, I've always managed to find something special in them. Give me time, I can usually find something in them that is lovely.



And, while on the other hand, there have been more occasions than I can think of where I have looked at a woman who is, superficially, quite attractive, but I can never really pass judgement if they're "beautiful" until they smile, or get excited about something -- even then, I concentrate more on the eyes. That's where I find the real beauty more often than not.....



And I'm starting to sound like a romantic sap, I apologize.  But that's pretty much how my brain works ... or doesn't. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? You decide.

FCBD Story: One Way To Stay out of Jail.

If you are new to the blog page in support of my novel A Pius Man, welcome.  If you've been here before, welcome back.

Today's free comic book day story has been brought to you ... with a lot of last-minute photoshopping.

This is basically how Sean A.P. Ryan, self-described mercenary and lunatic, manages to collect enough partners to

This story is called, simply  "One Way to Stay Out of Jail."  The star of this story is one Sean Ryan, who appears in A Pius Man and has already had a few short stories all his own: The Pirate King, the surprisingly popular Boys of the Old Brigade, and God Hates .... Superman?.  He's one of my more colorful characters.  Unlike Scott "Mossad" Murphy, who likes to go unnoticed, Sean has a tendency to leave behind evidence of his presence.  One can usually follow him if one just runs towards the screaming.... Oh, wait, wrong blog.

And, for the record, the complete list of stories is here.

Also, hang around for some of our trailers, below the story.

And here we go...

One Way to Stay Out of Jail



A trailer for the book proper.






Thanks to the Gepetto Project for this one:




My character, Scott Murphy .... he's around the site. You'll enjoy him. [Thanks again to http://www.matthewfunti.me/ for the voice work.]

A note on religion, characters, and who do you trust.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine read through the first fifty pages of A Pius Man. She was struck by something odd. The first priest who made an appearance was rather shifty looking. Her note was “is he supposed to look that menacing?”



Answer: Yes.



It occurred to me that I should address something: there might some people who think that, because I'm Catholic, means that A Pius Man is going to have an easy answer: Pope Pius XII was a saint and an action hero who could do no wrong.



This goes double for those who believe that, just because I go do church every Sunday, I must be super Catholic. (I have a disturbing vision of me in a cape that's Lenten purple. I then desire to acid wash my brain) Believe it or not, I have had people tell me this, to my face, even though it's more or less a minimum requirement.



If you fall into any of the above categories, then, good, that means you'll be surprised for most of the book.



Yes, I'm Catholic, but that doesn't mean brainwashed zombie. We'll take practically anybody. And we do: from the Kennedy clan to the founder of National Review, to the regular hosts of Crossfire. Even at the beginning, there were wise men an shepherds—for God comes to those who read many books, and those who read no books, but not those who read just one book (stolen from Bishop Fulton Sheen). For me to make every priest, Pope, Bishop, and everyone associated with the Roman Catholic church, a saint, would pretty much require a full frontal lobotomy, or total ignorance of the history of the Catholic Church. There's a reason most of the Popes have not been canonized (made a saint, not fired out of a cannon, though I can think of some priests who would benefit from the latter).



As Fr. Andrew M. Greeley, novelist, Catholic priest, and raging political Liberal, has noted, there are some good men who became Popes who made for bad leaders, and some not so nice people who became pope, but were at least able to lead a pack of vampires to a blood bank. One Pope who ended up in Dante's Hell had been a monk; a good and saintly person who all but ran screaming from the office. Several Popes had to be warlords, if only to quell the riotous local population, if not to halt advancing armies. Popes are like the rest of the members of the Catholic faith: they get all sorts.



So, when I started A Pius Man, it was after having done my homework on Pope Pius XII. Any conclusions I drew would be what I found in the history. I would burn him in effigy if I found anything amiss, and make him look good if he did good.



As for everyone else in the clergy—I've met stupid priests, good priests, gay priests, bad preachers, and I've read about the really bad ones. While I object to making Catholic priests a collection of punching bags, I'm not going to fall off the horse on the other side and make them all perfect. Trying to imagine them as perfect cardboard cutouts would actually make some of them even more boring than they are now.



It may have been John P. Marquand's character Mr. Moto who was the first obviously misleading character. The character was Japanese during a time when Imperial Japan was running roughshod over China, and spends much of the time lurking in the background. He kills at least one person with seeming little to no provocation. In the movies, they cast him as Peter Lorre, well known for playing assorted murderers and monsters of varying sorts. He was dark and sinister looking.... and he was also the hero.



However, now that I've noted that, I should probably go into something else: who the hell is the good guy here?



A Pius Man has been described more than once as a spy thriller. International intrigue will abound, and telling the good guys from the bad guys may require a score card.



Who do you trust in A Pius Man? I know I asked the question before, but seriously, think about it.





Fr. Francis Williams, SJ: a priest who not only seems to know what lurks in the hearts of men, but spends his time lurking in the background, has combat skills, and did we mention that he had connections with two known terrorists, murdered before Chapter 1? Oh, and he's also changing orders: he thinks that Opus Dei looks good.





Sean AP Ryan, mercenary: his idea of a good time generally involves shootout in public landmarks, explosives, and automatic weapons. It's well known that he's been brought to Rome to teach priests self defense tactics—even though he has a body count in the low hundreds.



Hashim Abasi, Egyptian cop: he's in Rome to coordinate security on the Pope's visit to Cairo, but his father blew himself up while working on an explosive vest, his country is on the brink of being taken over by radical extremists... and, oh, yes, it looks like he stoned his wife in an honor killing.



Scott “Mossad” Murphy and Manana Shushurin.... okay, these two look like two spies who are in Rome on a fact finding mission. One is a Catholic from Israel, and the other a member of German Intelligence. But why does Scott slowly have his resources shut down one by one, and why is she a German with a Russian last name? And why she she carrying such a large gun?



Commander Giovanni Figlia. He is the head of Papal security. To get to the Pope, you have to go through him. Then why does he steal a murder scene from the Rome Police? The victim is researching Pius XII, and the killer (and second victim) is a terrorist who spends a lot of time around the Pope's right hand man. For Figlia, how far does he think he has to go to protect the Pope?



Secret Service Agent Wilhelmina Goldberg: she's there to audit the Pope's security. She's from out of town, she was in the car with Giovanni Figlia when a body landed on it. She only just arrived in town. So, obviously, she had to have nothing to do with any murders, plots, or conspiracies. How much more obvious could it be? But did I mention that Mossad reserves the right to call upon the support of any Jew in the world at any time?



Interpol Agent Maureen McGrail: In Dublin, a priest is murdered before he can leave for Rome. He was going to testify at the canonization proceedings of Pope Pius XII, and now he has a swastika carved into his forehead and a knife sticking out of his chest. She's going to Rome to see if someone wanted to stop him from talking. She obviously has NOTHING to do with this.... even if she does have a past with mercenary Sean Ryan, and has helped him kill over a dozen people.



How did I end up with a book design in such a way that you can't really trust anyone? Just lucky I guess.

How A Pius Man Came to be: Part 2

Part 2: Now what?

So, you're going to right a history novel that's both thrilling and accurate, without resorting to something over the top fantastical in the meantime?



The answer there is: that's nice, wake me when you're done.



Oh, darn, wait—I want to write it!



Now what?



Before I begin the process of this book's creation, I should make something clear. I've wanted to write for a living since I was sixteen. By the time I had started A Pius Man, I had written almost a dozen other novels; a science fiction quartet that started as fan fiction and turned into a space opera; a thriller trilogy about a Secret Service Agent and the CIA assassin who kept running into each other; a murder mystery set in a Catholic high school summer camp; another mystery set at a science fiction convention; a hostage novel; I won't discuss the short stories. None of them had been published, but I had other things to do—high school, two bachelor's in three years, a master's in one, I was generally busy.



My point: writing wasn't an issue. I had more or less taught myself keyboarding by the time I had gotten the concept of the book, and had developed a mental habit of innovation out of the weirdest little things, as well as the ability to write for thirty hours straight.



But now, a new project. Working on a thriller encapsulating everything I had learned about Pope Pius XII. So, when in doubt, the title had to be a bad pun. Title: A Pius Man.



Then the questions started.



Well, where do I set the novel? Another world hopping journey, digging in the muck and mire, or perhaps solving puzzles laid out from World War II?



Been there, done that, and we've probably all seen that movie. If only for Ian McKellen's acting.



So, if I'm not going to bounce around the planet, where am I going to put this?



A few years prior, I had wanted to make a murder mystery set in the Vatican. I had never gotten past page one, but I wanted to have the scene open with a dead priest and a knife in his back.



So, when dealing with the Roman Catholic church, go to Rome. Check.



We need a conspiracy—what fiction with the Catholic church in it doesn't have some kind of deep dark conspiracy around it? Not counting The Exorcist.... few. Who's behind it? Well, the standard options are the government, the Church, or intelligence agencies.... I came up with a fun combination of all three.



Next step: who was I going to use in this mischegas of a plot? I didn't want an automatic hero. I didn't want a protagonist to leap out of a telephone booth or a police box. It wasn't happening. I needed vague characters. Someone whose loyalty the audience would question along the way. It wasn't going to be a paranoid thriller, but there are segments where it would be close.



One character was someone I had already invented—Commander Giovanni Figlia of the Vatican Office of Vigilance. His job is to protect the Pope. But if the Pope is guilty of a crime, or of conspiracy to commit murder, then what can he do? And just how do you arrest a pontiff anyway? He was already in Rome, a bit player I had invented for the background of a few other novels. It was time to give him a personality. A back story. Anything at all, really.



That's one...but what could possibly get him involved in a conspiracy going back decades?



Oh, that's easy. Kill an academic. Someone going through the Vatican archives. The “secret” archives, even though that's a bad translation error. Kill someone looking into Pope Pius XII.



Now, are we going to kill this guy in the Vatican? Really? Because I can't imagine how else we're going to involve Figlia...



Oooooh, wait, a bomb can fling a body a good distance, right? I can work with that.



Next, we need a fish out of water. Someone for whom the audience can relate to when she goes “Huh?” Especially when the audience is trying to figure out what sort of rabbit hole they fell into. My Alice had to be as out of place in the world of European Catholicism as possible... and who would be more out of place than an American Jew? Yes, my Alice is a Wilhelmina “Villie” Goldberg. Immediately, I had a vision of a short Italian acquaintance come to mind. She'd do for a physical model—about 4'11”. She'd have to be part of a security service, and making her American would make her a Secret Service agent.



Though if I stuck with that physical model, she would be a little short for a Secret Service agent who played human shield. However, foreign governments talk to the Secret Service about improving security, and all you need is a brain for that. So, when in doubt, get her from the NSA—which provided technical support for the protagonists.



How are we going to get her involved? Have her be there when we drop a body on Figlia... or his general area, at least. Check.





Somehow, having all this going on without another interested party being involved seemed unlikely. Someone from Mossad—if the Israelis wouldn't be interested in this subject, who would? Mossad involvement was easy to arrange—I created a character in one of my notebooks, someone who had arrived in Israel as part of a small emigration from the United States. A Gentile in Mossad... we have to call this section the Goyim brigade.



And what would attract anyone in Mossad to Rome? That's easy enough—there had been an earlier victim who had been researching the archives, and he was connected to terrorism. A dead terrorist with no confirmed killer—looks a bit suspicious. And a second dead body connected to Pius XII, seriously suspicious.



Mossad gets most of its intelligence from Germany, and the Germans would be involved anyway, given the subject matter—they are sort of touchy about the 1930s and 40s. So, throw in someone from German Intelligence. Two spies, check.



A neutral party would be good. Some character who has NO horse in this particular race; who has no investment in Pius XII being guilty, innocent, or not guilty by reason of insanity. Jews are out, Christians are out.... and if the Pope was going to declare a propaganda war on the Middle East (see below), he would probably tour it. Which means there would be a security specialist to coordinate with the Swiss Guards. He'd be connected to Figlia, for the coordination, and Goldberg, because she'd be improving security. But it would be too easy to have him be visibly neutral and good. We're suspecting everyone else, why not him? Hmm... oh, yeah, it seems that he stoned his wife to death. That'll work.



Check one investigative team: Papal Security, the Secret Service, and someone from, oh, make it Egypt.



And there's a wild card that has to be tossed in. Just to make everyone wonder what the hell goes on at the Vatican.... well, the man who shot Pope John Paul II was first jumped by a nun. Given how many clergy are in Vatican City, it would be more likely for one of them to first get to an assailant than some of the Swiss Guard. And if that should ever happen again, I would sure as hell want to bring in a security expert to train them....



Enter security specialist Sean A.P. Ryan. Already, he's earned comparisons to the comic book character Deadpool, the mercenary who will, occasionally, do the right thing, if only as a last resort. Not to mention being bat guano crazy. Wild card, check.



And what good is a mystery without a murdered witness? After all, they have Vatican trials for saints. Witnesses appear. One of the better known priests that I knew of was an Irish priest named Fr. Caroll-Abbing; he arranged much of the aide in Rome for fugitives and refugees. Caroll-Abbing was a real figure, but also quite dead when I started writing. However, I'm sure he must have had an aide. Caroll-Abbing was an Irish priest, assume an Irish aide.... and I had another character all ready and sketched out: Interpol Agent Maureen McGrail. And I had given her a previous professional dislike of Sean Ryan. We get to have some more fun that way.



And her arrival will certainly confirm that the events were all about Pope Pius XII—a dead academic may be accident, a murdered terrorist coincidence, but a murdered witness is enemy action.



I had my primary lineup. Two spies; a proper team of Papal Security et al; and two people from out of town. A three-tiered story. Works for me. In several books, Tom Clancy did at least three storylines for a hundred pages before he brought them together in a train wreck. I won't dawdle quite that long.



No, time to insert some paranoia. In any good thriller, you need to be under the impression that you can get it in the neck at any time from any direction. Kind of like a fast season of 24. We're in a thriller with the Catholic church, we must have at least one sinister looking priest, and a highly suspicious looking pope, someone so invested in the reputation of Pius XII, he'd do practically anything to see it's protected.



Hence Pope Pius XIII, who wants to make the World War II pontiff a saint, make him a figure to rally around....for...? Hmm. Rally around for what?



Enter another graduate course I took—problems in Contemporary African history. I had done a paper on the war in the Sudan, a war going on and off since the early 1980s. This Pope would have grown up with his country ignored, left to be bombed to hell, and—Darfur? Really? Thirty years of bloody warfare, civilians killed, churches bombed, and the world media focuses on one town? I suspect he would be a little put out by that, especially if he had lived in a town no one never heard of before or after it was wiped from the map.



How could I possibly make the Pope look sinister? I know—make him somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. He's using Pope Pius XII as a banner, using one side of the “debate” (mentioned in Part 1 of this article), Pius XII as hero and saint.



But, while making the Pope as sinister figure is nice—he's not going to run around Rome in a white robe trying to be inconspicuous. Especially since he's over two meters tall, and doesn't exactly blend in around Italy. (One acquaintance of mine returned from Rome and said “There are black people in Italy. Oh. My. God.” She was so shocked and appalled... she also wonders why I don't talk to her anymore.) He needs something every good Evil Overlord requires—a lackey. We need another priest.



Already have one. In a previous novel I drafted, I created a priest wandering around in the background—a priest with combat training from his time in special forces. He has martial training, kicks ass, and he has silver hair, and pale skin—no one would ever take him for an albino. Of course not. Suspicious looking lackey, check.



A three-layered plot with a wandering priest tying them all together.



Works for me.



Conspiracy, check.



Characters, check.



Now it has to be written.... Oh, shoot me now...